Success Stories

A large-group intervention to create change

The Request

Design and deliver a one day event to bring together two directorates (circa 100 people) in a large UK manufacturing company to enable them to work together more effectively.

The Solution

Using Dannemiller Tyson Whole-Scale Action Learning technology, the group achieved a shared reality of the challenges they were facing, explored what they were doing which encouraged working together effectively and what they were doing which worked against it, identified eight different workstreams to address those challenges, and generated ideas for progressing these workstreams after the conference. [Participant evaluations of the experience were excellent.]

…problems will stay solved longer and be solved more effectively if the organization solves its own problems.

Ed Schein Process Consultation: its Role in Organization Development

A coaching project for senior executives

The Request

Coach a group of directors and senior leaders in a large UK manufacturing company to enable them to develop their leadership.

The Solution

A needs-driven, time-limited cycle of six coaching sessions planned as a journey which took the clients from Knowing Self to Leading Self, to Leading Teams to Leading Organisations. Inputs included MBTI personality profiling, Systems Thinking, Team Development Theory, Leadership Styles Theory, Change Theory and Transition Theory. The project was included in the research undertaken by the UK Chartered Institute for Personnel and Development for the book The Case for Coaching, Jarvis, Lane and Fillery-Travis, June 2006.

Leaders hold a special position in the landscape of change. A leader’s clarity of purpose, and ability to connect the people in the organization to that purpose, go a long way toward mobilizing the necessary forces for change.

Mary Beth O’Neill, Executive Coaching with Backbone and Heart

An HR strategy

The Request

Facilitate the development of an HR Strategy for a large UK manufacturing company which integrates people management with business strategy.

The Solution

Using the methodology described in the Guide for Creating a Framework for Successful People Management prepared by the UK Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, the HR team were enabled to:

identify the key components of the organisation’s business strategy

review the extent to which existing HR practices met future business needs

identify eight HR strategic themes to integrate people management with the business strategy

define strategic goals for each of these themes

map the interconnections between the goals to identify mutually supporting processes

agree priority actions for the following eighteen months

The question for senior managers…is not Should we do away with HR? but What should we do with HR? The answer is: create an entirely new role and agenda for the field that focuses it not on traditional HR activities, such as staffing and compensation, but on outcomes. HR should not be defined by what it does but by what it delivers – results that enrich the organization’s value to customers, investors and employees.

Dave Urich, A New Mandate for Human Resources, Harvard Business Review